


Bargaining With the Gods

by lanalucy



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Books, Canonical Character Death, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, Gen, Gift Fic, Memories, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Post-Canon, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1573163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanalucy/pseuds/lanalucy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was written as a birthday gift for suzy_queue, who is not even a BSG fan. The idea struck me to write her a story about books, though, and this is what came from it.</p>
<p>I took liberties with the myth, assuming that without books, Kara would remember details sketchily, if at all, and fifteen years would have further degraded Kacey's memory of what Kara had told her.</p>
<p>Many thanks to newnumbertwo for the beta!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bargaining With the Gods

Kacey carefully held the book Kara’d drawn for her. Over the years, her memories of Kara had faded, but the book always made them sharper again for a little while. _Orpheus and Eurydice._ She stroked the cover page, remembering the laughter on Kara’s face when she’d interrupted Kara the first time.

_“Apollo is the god of music? But he can’t sing.”_

_“Out of the mouths of babes, Kacey. Apollo definitely cannot sing. He has other skills that make up for it. But no, in this story, Apollo is the god Lee was named after. Well-deserved, too.” Kara had drifted for a moment, then shaken herself. “Thousands of years ago, before you or me, before your mother, before any of us, when we still lived on Kobol with the gods, the god Apollo had a son, Orpheus, who had a lyre,” Kara pointed to the instrument she’d drawn on the page, “and he made such beautiful music with it that no one could resist stopping to listen, not even the rocks and the waters.”_

Kacey carefully turned the page and lightly rubbed her finger over the drawing of the lyre. Kara had been so talented. There was a man playing a lyre surrounded by animals and birds. She looked at the animals again, and was fascinated by the fact that here, on a planet thousands of light-years from “home,” there were animals that so closely resembled the ones Kara had depicted.

_This has all happened before…_ How many times had she heard someone say that? She could believe it.

_”Anyway, Kacey, Orpheus played so beautifully that he attracted the attention of Eurydice, and they fell in love and got married.”_

_“Like you married Daddy?”_

_Kara had taken a sharp breath and her arms had tightened around Kacey. “No baby. That man wasn’t your daddy, and I didn’t love him. When I fell in love on New Caprica, it was with you.” She bopped Kacey’s nose and smiled._

_“So Orpheus and Eurydice were very happy until she had an accident and died. Orpheus wandered all over Kobol looking for Eurydice, and when he’d looked everywhere else, he decided that she could only be in the Underworld.”_

_“What’s the un-der-worl?”_

_“Hmm. It’s where people go after they die, so I guess it’s like the Elysian Fields, but with less sunshine. It wasn’t a bad place, but it was hard to get to. So he used his music to charm everyone to let him in - see people don’t get into the Underworld unless they’re dead, and Orpheus was still alive._

Kacey turned another page, saw the drawing of the boat, the ferryman - Sharon? That couldn’t be right. There was the three-headed dog who kept dead people from leaving the Underworld. She turned another page. Orpheus standing in front of Hades’ throne.

_"Orpheus got all the way into the throne room, and he played such a sad song that even the god of the Underworld felt sorry for him. So when Orpheus explained that he missed his wife, Hades made a deal with him. Orpheus had to leave the Underworld, go back the way he’d come in, playing his music the whole way. Eurydice would follow him, and when she got into the sunshine, she’d be alive again. But there was a catch.”_

_“What’s a catch?”_

_“Well, sometimes people don’t really want to make a deal with you, so they make it really hard for you to keep up your end. That way, they don’t have to feel bad when you don’t get what you want. Like, say you wanted an extra bedtime story, but I didn’t want to read one. I might tell you that I’d read you an extra story tomorrow, if you stayed in bed tonight and didn’t get up once you were tucked in. You always get up and want more hugs if your mom's not back yet, so I could say that I didn’t have to read you an extra story, because you didn’t do what I wanted. But I would never say that. I love your hugs.” She pointed to the pictures. “In this case, Orpheus had to leave, play his music all the way out, and never look behind him. He had to believe that his wife was behind him and would stand in the sunshine with him. Only when he stepped out into the sunshine, he was afraid that Eurydice wasn’t there and he did look back.”_

_“Oh, no! What happened?”_

_“Eurydice was right behind him, but because he’d broken his word, she faded back into the shadows and he never saw her again. He only played sad songs for the rest of his life, until one day, his grief made him clumsy, and he fell into a river and drowned. His lyre was caught up in some branches, and the water rushing through the strings of the lyre created such beautiful sounds that people heard music on that spot for years to come.”_

Kara had looked at her, and she’d had such a sad expression on her face. Kacey had never understood Kara’s sadness, but looking back on it now, she thought maybe Kara had told her without meaning to. She’d loved someone so much that she’d made a deal, and when she’d fallen through on her end, she’d lost him forever. Kacey didn’t have to think hard to know who, either, because the story fit him, too. She’d heard more than one person whisper about how he’d been talking to Kara and when he’d turned around, she’d just been gone. Vanished into thin air.

She’d grown up on this planet watching Lee Adama get sadder and sadder. If she understood the story, it wouldn’t be long for him. She carefully wrapped the tattered pages up. She should share this with him, share what she remembered of Kara telling her the story. He could know that Kara was waiting for him to walk into the sunshine. This time, Kara was trusting that he was behind her.


End file.
